The blabbermouth media formed a stampede over the weekend in a rush to publish a new round of Wikileaks documents on al Qaeda and Guantanamo Bay.

The Memeorandum round-up is here and the breathless tick-tock on how lib outlets stepped all over each other to get the “scoops” is here.

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air says “Meh,” noting “these revelations don’t reveal much at all about AQ plots in the past, nor their operations today. The most recent data in either report is years old. They are both interesting for purposes of background information, but neither tells much of a story on its own or together that we didn’t already know.”

Let me give you a case in point: The New York Times’ story today on how Gitmo detainees coordinated suicide stunts to try to shut the facility down.

Against that backdrop, a collection of secret detainee assessment files obtained by The New York Times reveal that the threat of suicide has created a chronic tension at the prison — a tactic frequently discussed by the captives and a constant fear for their captors.

The files for about two dozen detainees refer to suicide attempts or threats. Others mention informants who pass on rumors about which prisoner had volunteered to kill himself next and efforts to organize suicide attempts. Two prisoners were overheard weighing whether it would create enough time for someone to end his life if fellow prisoners blocked their cell windows, distracting guards who would have to remove the obstructions.

While medical officials struggled to keep hunger strikers alive, other officials were on constant alert for signs of trouble. In May 2008, a detainee ordered fellow prisoners to “stop singing that song; we will sing it on Monday when our brothers leave.” His file noted: “It was assessed he meant planning suicide attempts.”

…Several later assessments of other detainees make references to the three suicides. One such file, for example, mentions in passing that a prisoner reported that another detainee had told him “he had been approached and recruited by the three detainees who had committed suicide.”

And Mr. Ahmed’s brother, Muhammaed Yasir Ahmed Taher, who was also a detainee until his repatriation in 2009, wrote to a family member depicting Mr. Ahmed “as a martyr,” according to an assessment. An analyst concluded that both brothers “viewed the suicide as a continuance of their jihad against the US.”

Gitmo sympathizers continue to characterize the suicides/suicide attempts as acts of desperation by poor, innocent potato farmers and bystanders. But these were clear acts of asymmetric warfare by cunning, cold-blooded jihadists versed in exploitation of Western sensibilities.

I said so all throughout 2005 and 2006, when the Close Gitmo cult was in full force during the Bush years.

Flashback June 2006: The Gitmo suicide was staged

Flashback June 2006: The Gitmo suicide stunt

Flashback July 2006: Gitmo suicide pact, boo-freaking-hoo part deux

Flashback June 2005:

The mainstream media and international human rights organizations have relentlessly portrayed the Guantanamo Bay detention facility as a depraved torture chamber operated by sadistic American military officials defiling Islam at every turn. It’s the “gulag of our time,” wails Amnesty International. It’s the “anti-Statue of Liberty,” bemoans New York Times columnist Tom Friedman.

Have there been abuses? Yes. But here is the rest of the story — the story that the Islamists and their sympathizers don’t want you to hear.

According to recently released FBI documents, which are inaccurately heralded by civil liberties activists and military-bashers as irrefutable evidence of widespread “atrocities” at Gitmo:

A significant number of detainees’ complaints were either exaggerated or fabricated (no surprise given al Qaeda’s explicit instructions to trainees to lie). One detainee who claimed to have been “beaten, spit upon and treated worse than a dog” could not provide a single detail pertaining to mistreatment by U.S. military personnel. Another detainee claimed that guards were physically abusive, but admitted he hadn’t seen it.

Another detainee disputed one of the now-globally infamous claims that American guards had mistreated the Koran. The detainee said that riots resulted from claims that a guard dropped the Koran. In actuality, the detainee said, a detainee dropped the Koran then blamed a guard. Other detainees who complained about abuse of the Koran admitted they had never personally witnessed any such abuse, but one said he had heard that non-Muslim soldiers touched the Koran when searching it for contraband.

In one case, Gitmo interrogators apologized to a detainee for interviewing him prior to the end of Ramadan.

Several detainees indicated they had not experienced any mistreatment. Others complained about lack of privacy, lack of bed sheets, being unwillingly photographed, the guards’ use of profanity, and bad food.

If this is unacceptable, “gulag”-style “torture,” then every inmate in America is a victim of human rights violations. (Oh, never mind, there are civil liberties chicken littles who actually believe that.)

Erik Saar, who served as an army sergeant at Gitmo for six months and co-authored a negative, tell-all book about his experience titled Inside the Wire, inadvertently provides us more firsthand details showing just how restrained, and sensitive to Islam — to a fault, I believe — the officials at the detention facility have been.

Each detainee’s cell has a sink installed low to the ground, “to make it easier for the detainees to wash their feet” before Muslim prayer, Saar reports. Detainees get “two hot halal, or religiously correct, meals” a day in addition to an MRE (meal ready to eat). Loudspeakers broadcast the Muslims’ call to prayer five times a day.

Every detainee gets a prayer mat, cap and Koran. Every cell has a stenciled arrow pointing toward Mecca. Moreover, Gitmo’s library — yes, library — is stocked with Jihadi books. “I was surprised that we’d be making that concession to the religious zealotry of the terrorists,” Saar admits. “[I]t seemed to me that the camp command was helping to facilitate the terrorists’ religious devotion.” Saar notes that one FBI special agent involved in interrogations even grew a beard like the detainees “as a sort of show of respect for their faith.”

Unreality-based liberals would have us believe that America is systematically torturing innocent Muslims out of spite at Guantanamo Bay. Meanwhile, our own MPs have endured little-publicized abuse at the hands of manipulative, hate-mongering enemy combatants. Detainees have spit on and hurled water, urine and feces on the MPs. Causing disturbances is a source of entertainment for detainees who, as Gen. Richard Myers points out, “would turn right around and try to slit our throats, slit our children’s throats” if released.

The same unreality-based liberals whine about the Bush administration’s failure to gather intelligence and prevent terrorism. Yet, these hysterical critics have no viable alternative to detention and interrogation — and there is no doubt they would be the first to lambaste the White House and Pentagon if a released detainee went on to commit an act of mass terrorism on American soil.

Guantanamo Bay will not be the death of this country. The unseriousness and hypocrisy of the terrorist-abetting Left is a far greater threat.

Same as it ever was.

I am glad New York Times reporter David Rohde is safe.

But I have questions.

Is the safety of journalists more important than the safety of our military? The safety of our homeland?

From September 11, 2001 to the present, the terror-tipping blabbermouths of the New York Times have repeatedly undermined national security by disclosing sensitive/classified information about many key counterrorism programs. The paper has gone to court to force the government to release such information. The paper has shown reckless disregard for the consequences of disclosure.

And yet, it enlisted the aid of other media outlets in suppressing the news of Rohde’s seven-month captivity — and even convinced al Jazeera to keep quiet:

Deciding not to report initially on reporter David Rohde’s capture by the Taliban for seven months was “an agonizing position that we revisited over and over again,” New York Times executive editor Bill Keller said Sunday.

“All along, we were told by people that probably the wisest course for David’s safety was to keep it quiet,” Keller said in an interview on CNN.

The Times reported Saturday that Rohde escaped from seven months in captivity in Afghanistan and Pakistan by climbing over a wall on Friday.

Rohde was abducted Nov. 10 along with an Afghan reporter and a driver south of the Afghan capital of Kabul. The Times kept the kidnapping quiet out of concern for the men’s safety, and other media outlets, including The Associated Press, followed suit at the Times’ request.

“It was an agonizing position that we revisited over and over again,” Keller said in the CNN interview with Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz. “But I also have a responsibility for the people who work for me. I send a lot of people out into dangerous places and their security is also part of my job.”

It was part of George W. Bush’s job, too.

Too bad the Bush-haters at the Times never accepted that.

Keller said Arab satellite TV station Al-Jazeera was planning a story on Rohde but agreed to hold it at the Times’ request.

Keller has told the Times that the newspaper had been advised by Rohde’s family, experts in kidnapping cases and others that publicizing the abduction “could increase the danger to David and the other hostages. The kidnappers initially said as much.”

We already know the Times suppresses inconvenient information. Now, we know that other media outlets will suppress info on their behalf in a conspiracy of silence for national security purposes.

Just imagine if the newspapers were, say, banks cooperating in secrecy with intelligence/counterterrorism officials to help track jihadists.

Why, it would be a front-page national scandal.

Related: Ed Morrissey writes about his small role in the Rohde story.

More: Marc Danziger at Winds of Change and Ed make very good points on the willigness of the NYTimes to blab about other jihadi kidnapping victims.

Did you hear about the plight of a South Wales couple who pointed out that CNN’s careless reporting of the Mumbai hotel siege endangered their lives?

Fox reports. You decide.

CNN reports. You pray for your life:

A SOUTH Wales couple caught in the Mumbai terror attacks claimed last night that CNN put their lives at risk by broadcasting where they were.

Lynne and Kenneth Shaw, of Penarth, warned that terrorists were listening in to the media to pinpoint Western victims. Mrs Shaw claimed the American cable TV channel had broadcast details of where they were at the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel.

She has appealed to the media to be careful with the information it broadcasts because safety could be compromised and lives lost.

The couple flew back into Heathrow yesterday morning on a flight arranged by the British Consulate. Mrs Shaw had been forced to hide under a table as terrorists stormed the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel. She and her husband were later rescued by Gurkhas and taken straight to the Australian Embassy for safety.

The couple were at the end of a month-long visit to India and were staying in Mumbai for a few days before heading back to the UK. From her home in Penarth yesterday, Mrs Shaw said: “We have been asked by the British terror police not to talk to the press.

“But the reason I would not want to talk to anyone is because our safety was actually compromised by CNN, which broadcast where we were.

“The terrorists were watching CNN and they came down from where they were in a lift after hearing about us on television. For that reason I would appeal to the media to be very careful about what they broadcast.

“When we left Mumbai there were still around 100 people trapped there.” She added: “People talk to one another on mobile phones and that gets broadcast and the terrorists knew from that.”

They never learn:

***

A CNN flack e-mails the following:

CNN requests an urgent correction to the story you are running. Please modify your headline as well so that it’s absolutely clear that Mrs Shaw has no issue with CNN at all.

CNN Statement

This story is not true. CNN has been told by Lynne Shaw that the accusations reported to have been made by her in the UK Press Association story are not accurate. She has no issue with CNN.

The alleged broadcast never happened and CNN at no time compromised her or the safety of her husband as reported.

Ends

Please note there will be an advisory on this imminently from the Press Association, as the original source of the story.

Many thanks,

Joel

Joel Brown

Senior Press Officer

CNN Europe, Middle East & Africa

We’ll see what Wales Online has to say.

Meantime, another example of the perils of talking to media during a jihadist siege here.

***

Update from the editor of WalesOnline:

ON SATURDAY, the Echo ran a story detailing how Lynne and Kenneth Shaw, of Penarth, claimed broadcaster CNN had put their lives at risk by detailing their location during the recent terror attacks in Mumbai.

The story was taken from the Press Association news agency, who have since stated: “Press Association would like to make clear that the interviewee’s allegations that CNN broadcast details compromising her and her husband’s safety have since been clarified by the interviewee’s husband to Press Association as ‘not valid’.”

I would be grateful if you could post the above clarification. I should also let you know that the article has now been removed from WalesOnline.co.uk…

The Central Intelligence Agency asked The New York Times not to publish the name of [hero], an interrogator who questioned Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and other high-level Al Qaeda prisoners, saying that to identify Mr. M—– would invade his privacy and put him at risk of retaliation from terrorists or harassment from critics of the agency.

After discussion with agency officials and a lawyer for Mr. M——, the newspaper declined the request, noting that Mr. M——had never worked under cover and that others involved in the campaign against Al Qaeda have been named in news stories and books. The editors judged that the name was necessary for the credibility and completeness of the article.

The Times’s policy is to withhold the name of a news subject only very rarely, most often in the case of victims of sexual assault or intelligence officers operating under cover.

Mr. M——, a career analyst at the agency until his retirement a few years ago, did not directly participate in waterboarding or other harsh interrogation methods that critics describe as torture and, in fact, turned down an offer to be trained in such tactics.

The newspaper seriously considered the requests from Mr. M——- and the agency. But in view of the experience of other government employees who have been named publicly in books and published articles or who have themselves chosen to go public, the newspaper made the decision to print the name.

That’s not even a justification. It’s just “so we decided to do it”. Now this guy gets rewarded by the Times for doing his job, and subjected to the full Cully Stimson/John Yoo treatment–lawsuits, hounding, stalkers. That’s at best; what if Al Qaeda decides to pay him a visit?

Damnable free-riders. They live and prosper under the blanket of security provided by men like this, and they expose him–unnecessarily, as Allah notes–to enhance the credibility of their story. What is the incentive to undertake any kind of dangerous or unpleasant job for the country if the Times is going to out you on a whim?

Are there any consequences for their decision? Does the outing of people who undertake hazardous duty for their country–again– prick anyone’s conscience? Anyone at the Times want to resign, or maybe just dissent from this decision?

Anyone?

Back in 2006, Michelle was peeved at the Times for their propensity to leak national security secrets; here’s her report on a protest she helped organize in front of the NY Times’ DC office. I like this placard:

It’s more appropriate than ever, and so is the following parody that I wrote back then:

__________

U.S. Soldier spying on bin Laden

NY Times Special Report

By B. Arnold

WAZIRISTAN—An American soldier, clinging to a cliff face littered with broken shale and animal bones in Waziristan, northwest Pakistan, is currently engaging in direct, unwarranted surveillance of Osama bin Laden, confidential sources have revealed to the New York Times.

The soldier’s conduct raises questions about the Bush administration’s policy of covert surveillance and intelligence gathering in support of his “War on Terror”. Constitutional experts are “troubled” by this and similar unwarranted searches that are designed to gather information on terrorists, but may reveal private information about American citizens instead.

“If there were an American citizen down there sunbathing in that Waziristan village next door to where bin Laden is conferring with his top lieutenants, then the Defense Department would now be passing around her photos,” said Cass Sunstein, a law professor.

Mr. bin Laden, who could not be reached for this interview, is a Saudi-born spiritual leader who, some say, was connected with the attacks on the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. The attack killed nearly 3000 people, many of them women and minorities. He is currently meeting with twelve lieutenants to discuss a worldwide spiritual initiative set to take place in Jakarta, Addis Ababa, Melbourne, and Houston, Texas on July 11th.

Observing the heavily guarded meeting from about fifty yards away is Lt. Thomas “Turk” Dobrovsky, of Houston. Crouched in a camouflaged “ghillie suit”, Dobrovsky adjusted a concealed antenna in an effort to record snatches of Arabic conversation in the mud meeting hall below. He is partially concealed by a rock outcropping, the one with the two scraggly bushes, but is awkwardly positioned and unable to defend himself. A burst of AK fire or an RPG from the guards below could kill him easily.

When contacted by a New York Times reporter, Lt. Dobrovsky became agitated and waved us away, and made a threatening motion by drawing his finger across his throat. In a climate of jingoism whipped up by talk radio and right-wing internet sites, such threats are not unusual. This is not the first time that journalists have been threatened by American soldiers eager to prosecute the War on Terror (see Editorial, “Trigger Happy Psychos who Hate the Free Press and the Constitution”, p.A-19.)

As the Times reporter filed his story, however, Lieutenant Dobrovsky pled with us not to reveal his position, whispering that he had a wife and child back home that could be destroyed “in a Houston chemical weapons attack” by Mr. bin Laden’s organization. He could not produce a search warrant and did not know whether there were any American citizens in the meeting, but said that if there were, he “hoped they got what’s coming to them.”

His wife, Helen Dobrovsky, refused to speak with Times reporters when contacted at her workplace, Reliable Carpet Service, at 456 W. Poplar Ave. in Houston. The dark-haired Ms. Dobrovsky (see picture at left) works as a receptionist at the front desk. We contacted her at her home, the only house with a white picket fence on Gladiolus Circle in Conroe, Tx, but she again refused to speak with the Times. Leaning on her green Honda Accord, with the Texas license plate number THX-9509, she directed a stream of obscenities at our reporter, calling him a “miserable traitor”, and a “murdering un-American bastard” who ought to be “thrown in a cell with a bunch of Al Qaeda butchers to see if they really will kill you last, you f—-ing traitor.”

Lt. Dobrovsky’s daughter was no more forthcoming. When contacted at Houston’s KinderCare pre-school, Haley Dobrovsky, 4, (see picture) refused to address the constitutional issues presented by her father’s surveillance, stating only that her “Daddy is very brave.” Haley, who is blond and carries a distinctive red Hello Kitty backpack, was then whisked away by the pre-school’s unarmed security officer, who asked our reporter to leave.

Back in Waziristan, a goat wanders through the village near where bin Laden camps. Like bin Laden, the goat is currently unaware that three F-16s have just taken off from Bagram AFB in Afghanistan, in response to an emergency radio call placed by Lt. Dobrovsky, who was angered about Times reporting of his illegal activities. While the Times reporter is safely out of the way, Lt. Dobrovsky remains behind to maintain a laser dot on the hut to guide the bombs to their target, and will likely be killed when the bombs strike.

If Mr. bin Laden has the New York Times web edition on his RSS feed, however, he will know that he has twelve minutes to finish his meeting, shoot Lt. Dobrovsky, and disappear before the aircraft are within strike range.

Times correspondents in Houston, Tehran, Pyongyang, and Damascus contributed to this report.

__________

{Post by See-Dubya}

In June 2005, when federal agents had a Fairfax man under surveillance, the man apparently asked [Fairfax County PD Sgt. Weiss] Rasool to check the license plates of three vehicles he thought were following him. Rasool’s lawyer described the man as a member of Rasool’s mosque.

According to court records, Rasool checked the databases and left the following voice-mail message for the man:

“Umm, as I told you, I can only tell you if it comes back to a person or not a person, and all three vehicles did not come back to an individual person. So, I just wanted to give you that much.”

The three vehicles were undercover FBI vehicles, according to a letter from the FBI filed in court yesterday, and Rasool’s message “likely alerted the subject of the FBI investigation which had a disruptive effect on the pending counterterrorism case.” …

The target was arrested in November 2005, then convicted and deported, according to court filings in Rasool’s case. Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeanine Linehan said that the target and his family were already dressed and destroying evidence at 6 a.m. when agents arrived to make the arrest, indicating that they had been tipped off. The target’s name and the charges against him have not been disclosed.

Among my questions: Fairfax, huh?

And then we get into the questions about why this guy’s still a cop.

Anybody shed any more light on this?

MORE: An earlier WaPo report reveals that they caught this guy because there was a FISA wiretap on his phone. So here’s a cop abusing his authority–doing unwarranted background checks on what, for all he knew, were private citizens–and caught by the eeeevil FISA wiretaps. Who does the ACLU root for now?

Here’s more dirt:

Hundley said Rasool was checking the federal terrorism “watch list to see if he or others close to him were incorrectly listed. None of them were, and he never divulged it. And anyone that was on the watch list, he didn’t divulge that either.”

Clever. Okay, well, not really.

{post by See-Dubya}

You may recall in December 2005 when the blabbermouths at the NYTimes revealed a classified program set up by the Bush administration monitor terrorist communications in the US (which inspired an entire gallery of media blabbermouth posters like the one above). The ACLU quickly and literally followed suit to kill the program.

Well, the outcome of their obstructionist efforts is just across the wires:

The Supreme Court has rejected a challenge to the Bush administration’s domestic spying program. The justices’ decision Tuesday includes no comment explaining why they turned down the appeal from the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU wanted the court to allow a lawsuit by the group and individuals over the warrantless wiretapping program. An appeals court dismissed the suit because the plaintiffs cannot prove their communications have been monitored. The government has refused to turn over information about the closely guarded program that could reveal who has been under surveillance.

Reuters has more:

The American Civil Liberties Union had asked the justices to hear the case after a lower court ruled the ACLU, other groups and individuals that sued the government had no legal right to do so because they could not prove they had been affected by the program.

The civil liberties group also asked the nation’s highest court to make clear that Bush does not have the power under the U.S. Constitution to engage in intelligence surveillance within the United States that Congress has expressly prohibited.

“The president is bound by the laws that Congress enacts. He may disagree with those laws, but he may not disobey them,” Jameel Jaffer, director of the ACLU’s National Security Project, said in the appeal.

Bush authorized the program to monitor international phone calls and e-mails of U.S. citizens without first obtaining a court warrant. The program’s disclosure in December 2005 caused a political uproar among Democrats, some Republicans and civil liberties activists. The administration abandoned the program about a year ago, putting it under the surveillance court that Congress created more than 30 years ago. The high court’s action means that Bush will be able to disregard whatever legislative eavesdropping restrictions Congress adopts as there will be no meaningful judicial review, the ACLU attorneys said.

The journalists, scholars, attorneys and national advocacy groups that filed the lawsuit said the illegal surveillance had disrupted their ability to communicate with sources and clients.

You can’t connect the dots if you don’t collect them.

Flashback: The left’s selective outrage over privacy invasion.

Look for the ACLU to go after Amtrack’s newly announced random bag search policy.

***
Background:

Federal Judge Rules Bush Surveillance Program Unconstitutional
Newsflash: NSA Doing Its Job
Finally: Justice Dept. Opens NSA Leak Probe
In Defense of the NSA
The New York Times Strikes Again
NSA and the Law: What the Times Didn’t Print
Red Alert: Chicken Littles on the Loose
Sorry NYT, America is OK With NSA

Here’s the e-mail that Josh Deckard of the press office sent to the White House Correspondents Association:

> —–Original Message—–
> From: Deckard, Josh [mailto:[REDACTED]@who.eop.gov]
> Sent: Wednesday, June 20, 2007 10:30 AM
> Subject: ASAP
>
>
> Press are NOT allowed to photograph the brief room during this transition-
> they aren’t even supposed to be in there. Press took pictures this
> morning and got very rude w/ the workers when they asked them to stop.
> Please make sure those pictures don’t run.
>
> If anyone breaks this rule from here on out they will lose their pass.
>
> Thanks

If only they would get as tough on the MSM blabbermouths who have published classified information about the war and our homeland security programs…

Apparently, the NYTimes didn’t think the rules applied to them. Yesterday, the Houston Chronicle blew the whistle on an appalling violation of those rules by Times reporters, who posted a photograph and videotape of a Texas soldier dying in Iraq–before the family had been notified:

A photograph and videotape of a Texas soldier dying in Iraq published by the New York Times have triggered anger from his relatives and Army colleagues and revived a long-standing debate about which images of war are proper to show.

The journalists involved, Times reporter Damien Cave and Getty Images photographer Robert Nickelsberg, working for the Times, had their status as so-called embedded journalists suspended Tuesday by the Army corps in Baghdad, military officials said, because they violated a signed agreement not to publish photos or video of any wounded soldiers without official consent.

New York Times foreign editor Susan Chira said Tuesday night that the newspaper initially did not contact the family of Army Staff Sgt. Hector Leija about the images because of a specific request from the Army to avoid such a direct contact.

“The Times is extremely sensitive to the loss suffered by families when loved ones are killed in Iraq,” Chira said. “We have tried to write about the inevitable loss with extreme compassion.”

She said that after the newspaper account, with a photograph of the soldier, was published Monday, a Times reporter in Baghdad made indirect efforts to tell the family of the video release later that day. The video was still available for viewing on the Times’ Web site Tuesday night, when the newspaper notified clients of its photo service that the photograph at issue was no longer available and should be eliminated from any archives.

The Times is telling a very different account of what happened than others:

The Times said it planned to discuss the issue today with Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, commander of the Multi-National Force Iraq.

Chira also said she had been told by the reporter in Baghdad that he had reached out to two people with Texas connections to act as intermediaries to alert the family that a video was going to be posted. They were Kathy Travis, a press aide to Rep. Solomon Ortiz, D-Corpus Christi, and Principal Gilbert Galvan of Raymondville High School.

Travis had a different account.

“Whoa, that isn’t what happened,” she said Tuesday night in a telephone interview. “The reporter called me late Monday afternoon and said he understood that the family was upset and that he wanted us to know that he had the utmost respect for the soldier and wanted us to let the family know that.”

Galvan said a New York Times reporter called Monday, saying he could not reach Leija’s relatives and asking Galvan to notify the family of the story and the impending release of the video.

Galvan said he went to the Leijas’ house and relayed the message. “They looked upset,” he said.

The damage has been done:

Chief Warrant Officer 4 Robert Lobeck, serving as the Army’s casualty assistance officer with Leija’s family in Texas, said seeing the images of Leija on the Internet was very upsetting to the relatives.

“Oh God, they shouldn’t have published a picture like that,” Leija’s cousin Tina Guerrero, who had not seen the images but was aghast about them anyway, told the Houston Chronicle on Tuesday in Raymondville. She said the images would be especially hurtful to the soldier’s parents, Domingo and Manuela Leija, who have remained in the family’s home on the edge of town. ”It’s going to devastate them,” Guerrero said. ”They’re having enough pain dealing with the death of their son.”

As of this morning, the story and video identifying Leija are still featured on the NYTimes website:

Today, the Houston Chronicle reports that the NYTimes will send a letter to “express regret” for their actions (hat tip: Jim Hoft):

The New York Times will express regret for hurting the feelings of the family of a Texas soldier after publishing a photograph and a video showing him as he lay dying in Baghdad.

The letter is part of an agreement reached Wednesday between the Army and the Times to resolve a controversy about the use of images of Staff Sgt. Hector Leija without his consent.

“The New York Times agreed to write a letter to Sgt. Leija’s family explaining the process we go through to notify families and why we run the articles and photographs we do, and expressing regret that the family suffered distress,” said a statement from the newspaper.

The decision came after a telephone discussion Wednesday between Times executive editor Bill Keller in New York, and Army Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, commander of the Multi-National Corps-Iraq.

Buried at the bottom of the Chronicle article is a troublesome detail:

An Army officer in Baghdad said that as a result of the conversation between the top newspaper editor and the commander, some journalists for the newspaper still would be allowed to embed with military units while the pair involved in the Leija story would not.

But a Times spokeswoman said the paper left the meeting with a different impression, saying a Times representative and military officials will meet to discuss embedding rules and that there was no word of any journalists losing the privilege.

So will the paper suffer any consequences for violating the rules and inflicting harm on the family or not?

***

Army Staff Sgt. Hector Leija’s MySpace page is here. His motto was “Bound by Honor”–a foreign concept at the NYTimes.

A key legal deadline has passed, raising doubts about whether criminal charges will ever be filed in an investigation of leaks to the New York Times about planned federal raids on Islamic charities in America.

The statute of limitations pertaining to the latest of the leaks, which took place in December 2001, was to expire yesterday, according to court filings last month by the prosecutor overseeing the case, Patrick Fitzgerald of Chicago.

A spokesman for Mr. Fitzgerald, Randall Samborn, said yesterday that he planned no announcements regarding the leak case. He declined to confirm whether the investigation had concluded.

The probe triggered a protracted legal clash that reached all the way to the Supreme Court, after Mr. Fitzgerald attempted to review the telephone records of two Times reporters, Judith Miller and Philip Shenon, in an attempt to determine who told them about plans to seize the charities over alleged links to terrorism. The newspaper vigorously resisted, claiming that the effort to track the calls was an intrusion on the First Amendment…

Will there be no consequences once again for the blabbermouth media?

***
Previous:

Blabbermouth NYT: Help! Help! Help!
Supreme Court to NYTimes: Buzz off
Terrorist-tipping NYTimes wants Ruth Ginsburg’s help
Blabbermouth damage, again
When blabbermouths lie: question the timing
The newspaper of wreckage
How about a nice big glass of…
The terrorist-tipping Times
More blabbermouth posters
Messages for the blabbermouths
Backlash against the blabbermouths
NYTimes blabbermouths strike again

Well, wonders never cease. The Times reports this afternoon that the court rebuffed the leak-dependent paper:

The United States Supreme Court refused today to stop a federal prosecutor from reviewing the telephone records of two reporters for The New York Times. The records, the paper said, include information about many of the reporters’ confidential sources.

In a one-sentence order offering no reasoning and noting no dissenting votes, the Supreme Court rejected a request from The Times to stay a lower court’s decision while the paper tried to persuade the high court to review the case.

Today’s order effectively allows the United States attorney in Chicago, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, to begin reviewing the records, which he has already obtained from phone companies, as early as this week.

The Justice Department told the Supreme Court on Friday that Mr. Fitzgerald is under enormous time pressure. “The statute of limitations,” the government said, “will imminently expire on December 3 and 13, 2006, on certain substantive offenses that the grand jury is investigating.”

The grand jury, in Chicago, is looking into who told the two reporters, Judith Miller and Philip Shenon, about actions the government was planning to take in December 2001 against two Islamic charities in Illinois and Texas. The disclosures to the reporters, the government lawyers wrote Friday, may have amounted to obstruction of justice.

Message to blabbermouths: You are not above the law, no matter how ostentatiously you wrap yourselves in the First Amendment.

John Stephenson: “I have to wonder if Ginsburg was sleeping again for this ruling.”

***
Previous:

Terrorist-tipping NYTimes wants Ruth Ginsburg’s help

Blabbermouths at the New York Times, who have been accused by federal prosecutors of tipping off Islamic charities fronting for terror, want Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to protect them:

The New York Times asked the Supreme Court yesterday to bar a federal prosecutor from reviewing the phone records of two of its reporters. The records, lawyers for The Times said, would allow the government to learn the identities of many of the reporters’ confidential sources.

The case arose from a Chicago grand jury’s investigation into who told the two reporters, Judith Miller and Philip Shenon, about actions the government was planning to take in 2001 against two Islamic charities. The United States attorney in Chicago, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, sought the reporters’ records directly from their phone companies, and The Times filed suit to stop him.

In August, a divided three-judge panel of the federal appeals court in Manhattan ruled in favor of Mr. Fitzgerald, saying the reporters were not entitled to shield their sources. The needs of law enforcement, the majority said, outweighed any protections the reporters might have in the First Amendment or other areas of law.

Ms. Miller left the paper last year after spending 85 days in jail in connection with a separate leak investigation, also supervised by Mr. Fitzgerald.

The paper’s filing yesterday was a limited one, seeking an order from Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg staying the appeals court decision until the Supreme Court has an opportunity to decide whether to hear the case. The deadline for seeking review of the appeals court’s decision is in January, but The Times said it would move faster.

In a letter filed in response to yesterday’s application, the Justice Department said it “desires to review the records in question as expeditiously as possible” but agreed not to do so until Wednesday. Yesterday afternoon, the court ordered the government to submit a formal response to the stay application by today at 4 p.m.

I wrote about the case in June here and talked about it on Fox News in July after another Fox News media commentator, Marvin Kalb, professed ignorance of the story (video here). The key points:

As the New York Post reported last September, the Justice Department charged that “a veteran New York Times foreign correspondent warned an alleged terror-funding Islamic charity that the FBI was about to raid its office — potentially endangering the lives of federal agents.” Times reporter Philip Shenon was accused of blowing the cover on a Dec. 14, 2001, raid of the Global Relief Foundation.

“It has been conclusively established that Global Relief Foundation learned of the search from reporter Philip Shenon of The New York Times,” U.S. attorney Patrick Fitzgerald wrote in an Aug. 7, 2002, letter to the Times’ legal department.

Shenon’s phone tip to the Muslim charity (which occurred one day before the FBI searched the foundation’s offices), Fitzgerald said, “seriously compromised the integrity of the investigation and potentially endangered the safety of federal law-enforcement personnel.” The Global Relief Foundation (GRF) wasn’t some beneficent neighborhood charity sending shoes and Muslim Barbie dolls to poor kids overseas. It was designated a terror-financing organization in October 2002 by the Treasury Department, which reported that GRF “has connections to, has provided support for, and has provided assistance to Usama Bin Ladin, the al Qaida Network, and other known terrorist groups.”

The Muslim charity had “received funding from individuals associated with al Qaida. GRF officials have had extensive contacts with a close associate of Usama Bin Ladin, who has been convicted in a U.S. court for his role in the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.” Moreover, the Treasury Department said, “GRF members have dealt with officials of the Taliban, while the Taliban was subject to international sanctions.”

Shenon’s then-colleague, Judith Miller, had placed a similar call to another Muslim terrorist-front financier, the Holy Land Foundation, a few weeks before Shenon’s call to the GRF. She was supposedly asking for “comment” on an impending freeze of their assets. According to Fitzgerald in court papers, Miller allegedly also warned them that “government action was imminent.” The FBI raided the Holy Land Foundation’s offices the day after Miller’s article was published in the Times.

The NYTimes’ refusal to cooperate with the feds to find illegal leakers in these counterterrorism cases deserves to be on the front page. Spread the word.

Photoshop: Blogs of War

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Blabbermouth damage, again
When blabbermouths lie: question the timing
The newspaper of wreckage
How about a nice big glass of…
The terrorist-tipping Times
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Messages for the blabbermouths
Backlash against the blabbermouths
NYTimes blabbermouths strike again

Meant to get to this earlier, but the newspaper of wreckage is at it again–publishing illegally leaked classified information about the war in yet another transparent effort to sway the election.

The article title: “Military Charts Movement of Conflict in Iraq Toward Chaos.”

After blabbing about the classified info revelaed in the article for 11 paragraphs, the Times notes:

A spokesman for the Central Command declined to comment on the index or other information in the slide. “We don’t comment on secret material,” the spokesman said.

The article then continues to blab about the illegally leaked info for another seven paragraphs.

Fox News reports:

The Pentagon is looking into how classified information indicating Iraq is moving closer to chaos wound up on the front page of Wednesday’s New York Times, and is not ruling out an investigation that could lead to criminal charges.

A spokesman for U.S. Central Command, which has responsibility for operations in Iraq, confirmed to FOX News that a chart published in The Times is a real reflection of the thinking of military intelligence on the situation in Iraq as of Oct. 18, adding that an effort is underway to find out who leaked the chart and if the breach of operational security constitutes a crime.

The published report includes a classified one-page slide show from an Oct. 18 military briefing. The slide show is titled: “Iraq: Indications and Warnings of Civil Conflict,” and shows spiraling violence in Iraq and a worsening position for American efforts.

Based on the slide show, Iraq is moving sharply away from “peace,” designated in green on the left side of the chart, to a point much closer to the red-zoned right side of the spectrum, marked “chaos.”

As depicted in the command’s chart, the needle has been moving steadily toward the far right of the chart since February, when a Shiite shrine in Samarra was bombed by insurgents.

An intelligence summary at the bottom of the slide says urban areas are “experiencing ‘ethnic cleansing’ campaigns to consolidate control,” and violence is at an “all-time high, spreading geographically.”

The Times reports the analysis was prepared by the command’s intelligence directorate, which is headed by Brig. Gen. John M. Custer.

The New York Times had not yet responded to a request for comment by FOX News about how it obtained the chart, but a spokeswoman for the newspaper said it will.

This is the chart:

Mario Loyola has some questions:

I want to know whether there is any level of national secret the Times is not willing to betray for the political advantage of its pet causes.

There is nothing the blabbermouths won’t blab if it hurts the Bush administration.

And I would like to know what else they may have doctored on the slide.

Hello, Justice Department?

And while we’re at it, I would love to understand why the law doesn’t prohibit the propagation of strategic national secrets in wartime — which has always been understood as treason.

Good question. Unbelievable that the Times thinks it’s problem is that it is too “even-handed.”

As touched on in my column on war time blabbermouths last week, the insidious, self-reinforcing relationship between the Bush-bashing Times and the Bush-bashing Dems harms us all. I repeat:

Another clarifying moment that underscores the fundamental difference between Republicans and Democrats on matters of national security, seriousness and secrecy took place on June 29, 2006.

That was the day the U.S. House of Representatives voted to condemn the decision by several newspapers — led by the newspaper of wreckage, The New York Times — to publish details of the Bush administration’s classified program to track terrorist financing. Known as SWIFT, the program had led to the capture of a key Bali bombing suspect and identification of a convicted al Qaeda helper based in New York City, as well as helping investigators probing domestic terrorist cells and suspected Islamic charities fronting for jihad. Under specious claims by anonymous accusers that the program’s legality and oversight were in doubt, the Times splashed details of the program all over its front pages. Democrats dutifully piled on to condemn the White House for its “illegal” “abuses of power.”

But House Republicans refused to roll over for the blabbermouth media and the blabbermouth Democrats. They put Washington on record with a vote on a nonbinding resolution stating the obvious — that news organizations may have “placed the lives of Americans in danger” by disclosing SWIFT and that Congress “expects the cooperation of all news media organizations” in keeping classified programs secret.

The resolution passed 227-183, with only 17 Democrats joining nearly all House Republicans in condemning the leak-dependent news media and supporting the surveillance program.

“This measure attempts to intimidate the press and strengthen the hands of this despotic administration,” railed New York Democrat Rep. Maurice Hinchey. “It is a campaign document,” pouted Rep. Pelosi in attacking the resolution. Republicans “have adopted a shoot-the-messenger strategy by attacking the newspaper that revealed the existence of the secret bank surveillance program rather than answering the disturbing questions that those reports raise about possible violations of the U.S. Constitution and U.S. privacy laws,” wheedled Rep. Edward J. Markey, D-Mass.

Why do I remind you of this vote and the Dems’ kindergarten reaction? Because the Times’ own ombudsman admitted this week that the story should never have run. Public editor Byron Calame ‘fessed up: “I don’t think the article should have been published. . . . I haven’t found any evidence in the intervening months that the surveillance program was illegal. . . . The lack of appropriate oversight — to catch any abuses in the absence of media attention — was a key reason I originally supported publication. I think, however, that I gave it too much weight.”

Not a single one of the Democrats who lambasted Bush and Republicans for protesting the reckless story has stepped forward to apologize to the president and the American people or acknowledge the harm caused to counterterrorism efforts.

Do you need to know any more to judge which party will keep this country safer? I don’t.

These people need to be held accountable–on Nov. 7 and beyond.

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The difference between D’s and R’s
Blabbermouth damage, again
When blabbermouths lie: question the timing
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How about a nice big glass of…
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Messages for the blabbermouths
Backlash against the blabbermouths
NYTimes blabbermouths strike again

Un. Freaking. Believable. The NYTimes ombudsman, Byron Calame, buried a bombshell mea culpa in his column today–reversing his prior defense of the Times’ blabbermouth report on a once-secret terrorist banking data surveillance program and now admitting the paper was wrong to publish it:

Since the job of public editor requires me to probe and question the published work and wisdom of Times journalists, there’s a special responsibility for me to acknowledge my own flawed assessments.

My July 2 column strongly supported The Times’s decision to publish its June 23 article on a once-secret banking-data surveillance program. After pondering for several months, I have decided I was off base. There were reasons to publish the controversial article, but they were slightly outweighed by two factors to which I gave too little emphasis. While it’s a close call now, as it was then, I don’t think the article should have been published.

NOW HE TELLS US?!

Those two factors are really what bring me to this corrective commentary: the apparent legality of the program in the United States, and the absence of any evidence that anyone’s private data had actually been misused. I had mentioned both as being part of “the most substantial argument against running the story,” but that reference was relegated to the bottom of my column.

The source of the data, as my column noted, was the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, or Swift. That Belgium-based consortium said it had honored administrative subpoenas from the American government because it has a subsidiary in this country.

I haven’t found any evidence in the intervening months that the surveillance program was illegal under United States laws. Although data-protection authorities in Europe have complained that the formerly secret program violated their rules on privacy, there have been no Times reports of legal action being taken.

Why isn’t this on the front page?!

…The lack of appropriate oversight — to catch any abuses in the absence of media attention — was a key reason I originally supported publication. I think, however, that I gave it too much weight.

You and every other Chicken Little, anti-Bush editor at the Times who put lives at risk and undermined counterterrorism operations by giving your bogus justifications “too much weight.”

In addition, I became embarrassed by the how-secret-is-it issue, although that isn’t a cause of my altered conclusion. My original support for the article rested heavily on the fact that so many people already knew about the program that serious terrorists also must have been aware of it. But critical, and clever, readers were quick to point to a contradiction: the Times article and headline had both emphasized that a “secret” program was being exposed. (If one sentence down in the article had acknowledged that a number of people were probably aware of the program, both the newsroom and I would have been better able to address that wave of criticism.)

Un. Freaking. Believable. It took him three months to admit this? Flashback to my column on July 5, 2006:

When is a “secret” not a secret?

When The New York Times decides, in the interest of saving its old gray hide, that it is not.

On June 22, the paper trumpeted its expose of “a secret Bush administration program” to track terror finances. The banking program, reporters Eric Lichtblau and James Risen made unmistakably clear, was a “closely held secret.” The front-page story referred to the secret nature of the program no less than eight times. A Times-produced Web video featuring Lichtblau promoted a brief interview in which he “reveal(ed) a secret Bush administration program to access financial records.”

But by July 2, smarting from the public backlash against its blabbermouth coverage, the Times crew was backpedaling faster than circus monkeys on barrels hurtling over Niagara Falls. Suddenly, the “secret” was no secret at all.

Everybody who’s anybody has known about the secret program all along, silly. New York Times ombudsman Byron Calame’s belated defense of the Times’ expose of the monitoring of the SWIFT banking program contained this revealing passage:

“There was a significant question as to how secret the (monitoring of the SWIFT banking program) was after five years. ‘Hundreds, if not thousands, of people know about this,’ (Executive Editor Bill) Keller claimed he was told by an official who talked to him on condition of anonymity.”

“Hundreds, if not thousands, of people” have known about the program before the Times blabbed about it. Well, there’s a scoop. So, why wasn’t this reported in the original story and reflected in the original, front-page headline?

There was no printed follow-up from lapdog Calame about Keller’s assertion, which goes a good bit further than the claim by Times’ apologists Richard Clarke and Roger Cressey. That mind-reading duo wrote in a Times op-ed that terrorists already assumed their financial transactions were being monitored. Calame curiously neglected to note that Keller’s claim contradicted both the tone and facts presented in the Times’ initial coverage by reporters Lichtblau and Risen.

Which is just as well, since Lichtblau himself is now contradicting his own story, too. On CNN’s “Reliable Sources,” facing withering criticism from talk radio host Hugh Hewitt, Lichtblau blustered:

“When you have senior Treasury Department officials going before Congress, publicly talking about how they are tracing and cutting off money to terrorists, weeks and weeks before our story ran. USA Today, the biggest circulation in the country, the lead story on their front page four days before our story ran was the terrorists know their money is being traced, and they are moving it into — outside of the banking system into unconventional means. It is by no means a secret.”

Hmm. What was that headline over Lichtblau’s story again? Oh, yeah: “Bank Data Sifted in Secret by U.S. to block terror.” Meanwhile, finance regulators and top government officials in Belgium (who apparently aren’t among the “hundreds, if not thousands” who knew about the program) have ordered a probe into SWIFT, which is regulated by the Belgian central bank and answers to Belgian law. Bush-undermining Eurowheedlers are launching a debate in parliament over the program next week, and a private human rights lobbying group has filed formal complaints against the SWIFT banking consortium in 32 countries.

Lesson No. 1: Never trust the Times’ headlines.

Lesson No. 2: Never trust what’s printed under the Times’ headlines.

Lesson No. 3: Never trust what comes out of the mouths of the Times’ editors and reporters.

Avoid the newspaper of wreckage, and help keep American safe.

Now, wait until you read Calame’s last paragraph justifying his blindness:

What kept me from seeing these matters more clearly earlier in what admittedly was a close call? I fear I allowed the vicious criticism of The Times by the Bush administration to trigger my instinctive affinity for the underdog and enduring faith in a free press — two traits that I warned readers about in my first column.

Every last bit of that “vicious” criticism was deserved. Stop making excuses. It’s Bush hatred that led to the reckless publication of the story. It’s journalistic hubris that prevents the rest of Calame’s colleagues from admitting the truth.

Photoshop: Carl M.

***

Patterico says Calame should resign:

A public editor who cannot objectively evaluate his paper’s behavior in the face of criticism — from any source — should not be the public editor.

I appreciate Calame’s honesty. But he should resign.

Ed Morrissey also challenges Calame’s characterization of criticism of the paper as “vicious”:

Calame says that his intial support came from an impulse to protect journalism from the “vicious criticism” of the Bush administration. “Vicious”? I’d like Calame to define that. The administration rightly condemned the Times for risking their ability to track terrorist financing, but I don’t recall the administration calling anyone “traitorous”, for instance, although plenty of bloggers did. And what kind of ombudsman decides to defend his paper simply because all the right people got angry? That’s a mighty thin line of argument, and Calame should be embarrassed to make that admission on the pages of his own paper…

…Calame dislikes the administration as much as the rest of the people at the New York Times, and in the guise of detached analysis endorsed the publication of a non-story in his zeal to undermine the White House using any means at their disposal. Everyone else knew that this story had no merit; it took the Times and its public editor four months to figure it out.

That should tell you everything you need to know about the New York Times.

Damn straight.

Tom Maguire: “Toothpaste, meet tube.”

The Anchoress distills Calame’s weasel defense down to 10 words:

“I hated Bush so much I couldn’t do my job…”

Yep.

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The blabbermouths backpedal
The newspaper of wreckage
Why they blabbed: It’s the arrogance
How about a nice big glass of…
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Backlash against the blabbermouths
NYTimes blabbermouths strike again
The terrorist-tipping Times

According to the plaintiffs — lawyers, scholars, journalists, and others who communicate internationally with terrorists — the disclosure of the surveillance program has caused terrorists to discontinue international telephone and e-mail communications:

Plaintiffs here contend that the TSP [”Terrorist Surveillance Program”] has interfered with their ability to carry out their professional responsibilities in a variety of ways, including that the TSP has had a significant impact on their ability to talk with sources, locate witnesses, conduct scholarship, engage in advocacy and communicate with persons who are outside of the United States, including in the Middle East and Asia. Plaintiffs have submitted several declarations to that effect. For example, scholars and journalists such as plaintiffs Tara McKelvey, Larry Diamond, and Barnett Rubin indicate that they must conduct extensive research in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia, and must communicate with individuals abroad whom the United States government believes to be terrorist suspects or to be associated with terrorist organizations. In addition, attorneys Nancy Hollander, William Swor, Joshua Dratel, Mohammed Abdrabboh, and Nabih Ayad indicate that they must also communicate with individuals abroad whom the United States government believes to be terrorist suspects or to be associated with terrorist organizations, and must discuss confidential information over the phone and email with their international clients. All of the Plaintiffs contend that the TSP has caused clients, witnesses and sources to discontinue their communications with plaintiffs out of fear that their communications will be intercepted.

Let me put that into plain English: terrorists and their associates will no longer communicate with these plaintiffs via e-mail and telephone — in other words, ways that the government could monitor under the surveillance program — because the terrorists are aware of the surveillance program. It’s not the Terrorist Surveillance Program itself that has caused terrorists to cease these international communications. It’s the fact that the terrorists now know about it.

Read the whole thing. It’s an important refutation of the blabbermouth meme that the terrorists already knew about the program and the NYTimes’ smug insistence that it did no harm in splashing the details all over its front page.

The newspaper of wreckage marches on…

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When blabbermouths lie: question the timing
The newspaper of wreckage
How about a nice big glass of…
The terrorist-tipping Times
More blabbermouth posters
Messages for the blabbermouths
Backlash against the blabbermouths
NYTimes blabbermouths strike again

My favorite so far (how about putting this on the front page, Bill Keller?):

I want this t-shirt:

Allah’s got more.

Pam at BlogmeisterUSA was there and blogged the protest. So did the other Pam, who was busy today.

Fighting the Left snaps photos of Times employees taking their usual stance…looking down upon the people from on high:

Van at Kesher Talk and Pamela at Atlas Shrugged covered another important War on Terror protest in NYC today.

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Newspaper of wreckage, continued
The newspaper of wreckage
The blabbermouths backpedal
The terrorist-tipping Times
How about a nice big glass of…
More blabbermouth posters
Messages for the blabbermouths
Backlash against the blabbermouths
NYTimes blabbermouths strike again